Last year, I was very faithful to my intention to write a poem each day for National Poetry Writing Month.  I didn’t make much headway with it this time around at first.  Some combination of lack of discipline, sleep, and inspiration left me with a few jagged, unfinished lines across a few days.  I didn’t feel as badly about it as I thought I might.  It just didn’t seem to be happening.

Then, NPR’s afternoon show, Tell Me More, announced that they’d be featuring poetic tweets each day.  Something clicked for me, and I have really been enjoying finding the essentials, boiling down some experience or complex mood to 140 characters or less.  I gave myself the extra challenge of using every character if I could, inclusive of the hash tag: #tmmpoetry.

I could see doing much more writing like this @spiritrockssexy – letting the little bursts of creativity out where there is little room for explanation. I cheated a bit, perhaps, as a few of these seemed to call for titles in addition to their 140.  Some of these poems feel like just a beginning.  Still, this is an interesting way to find the opening lines.

I was pleased to find this first one (sans title) was posted on Tell Me More’s Muses & Metaphor 2012 page:

Today, while anticipating you in summer

took to the fern print blanket.
sang first time this month.
remembered the reinless hum of wanting.
bought raisins and radishes.

Green Earrings, essential

(Inspired by: Fire in the Hole – Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist)

Two voices, harmony
a lifeline drawn in French kiss tension
piano, honey-stark, sets free keys
shaven to breathless brilliance

A churning stomach digesting stories
misses truth by the volume of its growling.
My frantic eye missed the prism
avoiding rain

hard muscle tribal tats
under cargo pants, bikini shaven
square hips, a blonde girl swoosh!
a cartwheel through gender playground

ginger hot I watch
closer
sweet like petals
a hand a shoulder
a still center
a third heart
privy to their union
our silky wonder

Just past Jackson Rd.
horses, goats, and green replace
hardwares and fire trucks.
No Trespassing Park is worth a quick defiance.

Take off the faded blues
business casual, glitter
boots
or let little black dress fall
to ankles.
What do you see in life, naked?

I Should Look Again Tomorrow

Grey failings, lanced through to center
judged even by the sweet empathic eye.
So apparent is my never-vibrant purple,
so unmade

–

It has taken me days to write anything at all on the passing of the wonderful Levon Helm.  At least, here is a tiny first try.

Phoenix of the holler and hip
electric American dirt
your voice has outgrown the reel.
Travel well, backbeat healer.

Gary Wilson’s music might be a gradually acquired taste for some, but in my personal experience people either get Gary or they don’t.  I’ve been a huge fan for years thanks to my friend Marcello McDonnell (Steel Tips, Spy Gods, Vinyl Dogs) and I have had the opportunity to turn many people on to Gary Wilson’s work.  Some love it and never look back.  Others just look completely puzzled or slightly freaked out.  Personally, if I ever were to leave for that fabled desert island, Gary Wilson’s cult classic You Think You Really Know Me would be a must on the playlist.

For many years, it seemed unlikely that I’d ever have the chance to see his live performance, so I was amazed when he began performing again in 2002.  Now I check out the live show whenever possible, and am excited to go to see Gary Wilson with his band, The Blind Dates on April 20^th at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn.

There is much to the Gary Wilson back story, but I’ll take a tip from Five Minutes 3 Seconds and will not reiterate here.  You can read my account of the story along with insights from the man himself in this 2003 piece for WeirdoMusic.com.  I will say that I’ve described various aspects of Gary with the terms “outsider rock groove,” “obsessive teenager in love,” “punk-influenced,”  “maniacal repetition,” and “Steely Dan with a Love Unlimited Orchestra attitude.”  All those still hold, and don’t even begin to cover it.

Gary Wilson exemplifies The Dream Between concept in many ways- his sounds and “out there” stage performance float free within their own lexicon, existing in no single musical or psychological universe.  All this points toward just the kind of mind I can’t help but explore.  Big thanks to Gary for taking the time to respond to these questions with honesty, oddity, and ultimately with optimism.

Robin Renée: According to my understanding, you tend to play and record all the time.  How does your process change when you are getting ready to release a new recording?  What was happening as you wrote and prepared for Feel The Beat?

Gary Wilson: Nothing has changed since I was 13 years old.  I get inspired and I walk into the room where my recording equipment is and start recording.  It can happen anytime.  I might come home from playing piano in some country club, turn a horror movie on the TV, throw a cheese pizza in the oven and wait for the inspiration to hit me.  Then it begins.  For me, coming up with an album’s worth of material is a long process.  I do a lot of self-editing.  I toss out a lot of tracks that I spend a lot of time on.  That can be depressing.  You think you might have a song, then after working for weeks on it you throw it away.  That’s showbiz.

RR: Even though your process seems to hold steady, will your audience be hearing new sounds and shifts since Electric Endicott in 2010?

GW: First of all, Feel The Beat was recorded on my new recording equipment (Tascam 2488neo).  It’s always exciting for me to get familiar with the capabilities of new recording equipment.  It’s sort of like a new toy.  I started with a Wollensak mono tape recorder when I was 12 years old.  Always had an interest in recording.  Also the dynamics of life, from day to day, bring a new adventure into my world.  This becomes part of my music.  Each album is like giving birth to a baby.  There’s excitement in the beginning, then it’s released and a sort of gloom comes over me.  That’s when you go back into the recording room and start a brand new project.

RR: The people and places of your youth in Endicott, NY still persist and are the backbone of your work.  Linda, Cindy, Debbie, Bermond Avenue, Northside Park– What continues to draw you into these stories?  

GW: I guess it brings me back to a happier, less stressful time in my life, though growing up is no easy feat.  When I perform now, I try to recreate the way I felt when I began playing professionally at 12 years old.  Music was fun, exciting and innocent.  Our parents would take us to the gigs.  That is why sometimes I will bring a large cardboard box on stage with my home address painted on the front of the box.  I can sit in the cardboard box and recreate, in my mind, the way I felt when I was a young teenager on stage – the way I felt when Linda, Karen and Lugene would come see my band (Lord Fuzz, Dr. Zork and The Warts, Gary Wilson and the Blind Dates) at the local teen centers.  When I come out of the box I feel refreshed.

RR: Do you recall a defining moment or incident that solidified these memories as your palette? 

GW: I recently was talking to my older brother and he mentioned that I was hit in the temple with a baseball bat when I was 10 or 11 years old.  We both thought that perhaps that event, getting hit in the head with a baseball bat, was what determined my perspective on art and music.

RR: “Lugene Kissed Me Last Night” is reminiscent of the intense ending of your classic “6.4 = Make Out.”  What inspired you to introduce “the new girl,” Lugene, on Feel The Beat?   (Note: I asked this question temporarily forgetting that Lugene was mentioned previously in “Your Dream is Not My Scene,” in 2008 on Lisa Wants To Talk To You.  It’s not easy to keep track of all of Gary’s women.)

GW: Lugene was my first girlfriend, before Linda.  The first girl I really kissed.  I have fond memories of summer days at my friend’s house in Endwell, NY.  His parents worked in the day time so we had the whole day to hang out at his house.  Lugene and Cheryl would bus it down from Johnson City, NY to Endicott, then make their way to my friends house in Endwell.  Yes, Lugene kissed me that night.

RR: I have an artistic love of mannequins and wig display heads.  At least in part, I think I have you to thank for this influence.  The mannequin aesthetic has carried throughout your artwork and live shows.  All kinds of theories could arise on what they indicate – beauty, uniformity, sexism, objectification, idealization… What’s the mannequin thing about for you? 

GW: There is something modern, surreal about mannequins.  I’ve been fascinated with mannequins ever since watching the black and white Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours” when I was 8 or 9 years old.  The story featured Anne Francis.  That’s the episode where the department store mannequins come to life for a short time.  For me, the mannequins represent the girls in my life –frozen for eternity in the form of a mannequin, as if our love will never die.  I remember my first “comeback” gig at Joe’s Pub in NYC in 2002.  The record label rented 3 or 4 mannequins for the night.  By the end of the performance, the mannequins were damaged.  It cost the label something like $650 per mannequin.  The label decided to put the damaged mannequins in their NY apartment as works of art.

RR: I once had a cassette of yours called You Made Me Feel My Misery.  As I recall, a few of those tracks, like “Gary Saw Linda Last Night (Kissing Frank Roma)” reemerged on later albums.  I always loved the title song.  Whatever became of it?  What factors help you decide which tunes make the cut? 

GW: I re-recorded “You Made Me Feel My Misery” recently.  I was going to include it on my album Feel The Beat but decided against it.  When I self-released the original Mary Had Brown Hair back in 2003 before Stones Throw Records released it, “You Made Me Feel My Misery” was included on that release.  When Stones Throw re-released Mary in 2004, (hip-hop producer and Stones Throw Records founder) Peanut Butter Wolf eliminated three cuts including “You Made Me Feel My Misery” from the original version.  The song will appear on my next album.

RR: What do your noise pieces and avant garde jazz interludes (“Why Did You Kiss Me?,” “Stephanie Was Crying in the Rain”) say that aren’t said in your songs constructed in a more traditional pop fashion?

GW: I’ve been involved in the avant garde since I was 12 years old – recording my own electronic music, composing avant garde classical music, modern plays, painting, etc. The weirder the better, when I was growing up.  This is what led me to John Cage inviting me to his house in Haverstraw, NY when I was 14.  I always try to combine both elements on my records and performances. I also love the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

RR: Yes, I always hear that combo of distinctly avant garde and smooth, upbeat pop in your music. I am wondering: does each style help you convey or express a different set of emotions or experiences?

 GW: Yes, the avant garde and smooth pop convey different emotions, though they can collide.  This occurs in many of my songs such as “Chrome Lover,” “Sea Cruise,” “6.4=Make Out,” “Gary Saw Linda Last Night,” “Linda Wants To Be Alone” and others. When we do these songs on stage, you never know what can happen.  I always wanted to do a 30 minute version of “6.4=Make Out” with my band and I performing with a large classical chamber group complete with a large string section.

 RR: What was your visit like with John Cage? What an honor at 14.

 GW: It was an honor to spend three days with composer John Cage at his house. I was 14 or 15 years old. I was playing cello and string bass with our school chamber orchestra and string quartet.  I was composing experimental music and our school chamber group would occasionally perform my classical compositions at school events. This led me to contacting John Cage by phone. Mr. Cage gave me an address where to send him some samples of my music.  A few weeks later John Cage invited me to his house in Haverstraw, NY, not far from NYC.  My mother drove me to Haverstraw from Endicott, NY.  On our first visit, my mother became lost in the wooded area not far from John Cage’s house.  We stopped at the local general store and I called and told him we were lost.  (He) drove down to the general store and picked me up and drove me to his house. Here I am at 15 years old being driven to John Cage’s house by John Cage himself.  My mother drove me to Haverstraw for three days.  Each day John Cage went over my musical scores, corrected things, and suggested things.  I still have some of the scores where he went over my original notation and put in what he thought the orchestra would be better at interpreting.  It still amazes me that he took the time to meet with me, a young teenager.  College grad students would give anything to meet one-on-one with John Cage and have him correct and advise on their compositions.  One of the highlights in my life.

Many years later, I had a chance to meet with John Cage again at the University of California, San Diego where he was a composer in residence.  Bernadette Allen was a grad student at UCSD at that time.  I handed John Cage a copy of You Think You Really Know Me and asked if he remembered me.  He said he did.  Truly an inspiration to me.

RR: You had a very long artistic and personal relationship with Bernadette Allen.  I heard about her passing – I’m so sorry, Gary.  If you are willing, will you please say something about your years with her?  Where was your connection and what was her influence on your life and work? 

GW: Bernadette Allen passed away in 2011.  My heart is broken.  We were together for 32 years.  I miss her dearly.  Bernadette performed with me often and we did many videos together.  Bernadette even attended (though didn’t perform) our last CBGB’s gig back in 1979.  Stones Throw Records has been converting all her 3/4″ videos to DVD for a future DVD release.

RR: How wonderful to have such a partnership for so long. What qualities made her such a special person in your life?

GW: The great thing about Bernadette was she let me be myself. I felt comfortable with Bernadette.  She was very intelligent and artistic and put up with me for 32 years.

RR: Thank you for being willing to share that, Gary.  Is there an essential story you ultimately wish to tell?  One’s roots are never forgotten?  Something about life as a romantic quest?  The surreal nature of consciousness?  Love is pain?  Is it really all much simpler? 

GW: Life has its ups and downs.  We all try to get through life the best we can.  Try to follow your passion.  Try not to hurt people and animals.  I know sometimes following your passion can be difficult if you have family and many responsibilities.  One has to sometimes put your dreams aside to take care of your family and your responsibilities.  That’s sad.  But still, you still can do what you love part-time.  My father worked for IBM for about 40 years.  He still played music at the local hotel lounge four nights a week.  He didn’t give up music even though he had a wife and four children and work 5 to 6 days a week.  In other words, don’t let life bring you down to the point where you lose your dreams.  I’ve been fortunate in the last ten years to be able to do what I really enjoy and will continue as long as I can.

RR: Is there anything else you’d like to share today from the heart-mind-soul of Gary Wilson?  

 GW: Please don’t sport fish and hunt.  The poor fish and animals have it hard enough already without humans killing and hurting them for sport.  How can someone laugh and smile while they hold up a gasping fish on a hook.  Poor fish is dying.  What’s so funny about that?  Or chasing some animal through the woods for the sole purpose of killing the animal.  Don’t the hunters see the fear in the animal’s eyes right before they blast away at the poor thing?  It’s one thing, and that’s even sad, when one has to hunt and fish for survival, but not for blood sport.

RR: It’s good to hear you speak out for non-violence. I am also so glad that your re-rediscovery has led to your being able to do what you enjoy.  Fans who never imagined new recordings and live shows are pretty happy, too.  So, I can see how the songs themselves convey the “follow your passion” message, particularly if your passion is pursuing Linda, Kathy, or Karen.  Is there anything else you hope the songs themselves convey directly to the listener?

 GW: Yes, I appreciate all that has happened to me. When people listen to my music and come to my shows, I do get different reactions, which is good.  I hope I convey to the audience what I learned from John Cage. Walk one’s own path. Be yourself.  Have fun with your art, and your life.  Don’t worry what other people think.  Ask yourself what would you like to see and hear.  Then do it.  It takes time to get one’s personality imbedded into one’s art but if you keep working at it, you never know where it can lead.

Gary Wilson will perform at Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, Friday, April 20^th

Doors open 8:30pm (Early Show)

Also on the bill: The Immaculates, Moonmen on the Moon, Man, Slowdance (DJ set) and Mr. Fahrenheit (DJ set)

$10 adv/$12 day of show

Gary Wilson online: www.sixpointfour.com

I began this blog last night.  It was going to be something very different.  As I woke up on this warmish, misty Ostara morning, it was as though all the things I was poised to worry about in writing had put themselves in order. Whether coincidental or a function of syncing spirituality with the seasons, I do feel balance on this Equinox.

The making of the new chant CD has happened in about as opposite as fashion as the last one as possible. The kirtans and other spiritual songs on Live Devotion came quickly, jumping into my head as I worked, drove, or sang other songs—anytime, and when least expected.  A few rehearsals, one long day in studio, and it had arrived.  I already knew that what we were affectionately calling “Studio Devotion” would be a more traditional recording experience, but I didn’t think it would be a year in the making.  Given that a lot of the year was pushing past emotional obstacles ad absurdum, I am happy to say that the gestation period for what will officially be called This seems just about over.  I would like to release it well – with some traditional and innovative promotion and viable distribution.  I’m open to suggestion from all quarters on how that may best happen.  In the meantime, it is a wonderful feeling to be just about through with recording and mixing and to feel the emergence of new spiritsong on the first day of spring.

A recent blog by my friend LauraLynn Jansen inspired me to reflect on “What is yogic?” Today, I believe it is the practice of remembering, of coming back to center, and living a life that allows all sorts of activities and interactions to be the instrument of balance.  Music, when I lose myself in it, does this work.  Lately exercise – especially swimming and biking – are just as much music to me, just as much a journey toward Center.  I am undertaking a sprint triathlon training, also inspired by LL.  I keep finding more and more depth in meeting the challenges.  I have considered the workout to be a form of meditation before, but it is new for me to think about fitness as art.  The metaphor of Oneness meets the day-to-day.

April is coming, and that means NaPoWriMo.  It may make me very busy, but springtime is emergence is yoga is staying in the flow of writing.

I am feeling like a fully erotic being again, after too long a hibernation.

I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like.  I’m generally too busy writing something to give more than transient attention to the books I hope to absorb.  This is a definite frustration for me – If I had 48 hours in a day I’d take some of those extra hours to sink more deeply into popular science and science journals, spiritual biographies, political nonfiction, and contemporary poetry, maybe even with time left over to escape into a few episodes of Regular Show or American Dad.  Love of toons aside, as I’ve gotten more and more interested in trying my hand at writing some fiction, I do think I ought to start reading some of it now and again.

When my friend Glenn Walker (Welcome to Hell, French Fry Diary) asked me if I’d like The Dream Between to be a stop along Fran Metzman’s virtual tour for her new collection of short stories, The Hungry Heart Stories, I thought it was a fun and innovative idea.  It was enjoyable to go into the reading experience with no preconceived notion of what to expect.  What I found was that I’d need to leave my hope of escaping into stories aside.  Witnessing the interactions of the characters in memorable situations led me to some meaningful reflection on relationships in my own life.

In My Inheritance, Metzman explores the difficult mother-daughter relationship, as she does later in Getting Closer.  Frustration, indifference, avoidance, reconciliation, and hope are on the non-exhaustive list of elements thrown into the emotional soup.  How does peace-making around the relationship between my mom and me compare?

How have I been like the woman in Christmas in August?  What makes for healthy navigation through the end of a romantic relationship?  Am I capable of distorted love and desire that could lead to the main characters’ acts in The Invisible Wife or Myra’s Garden?

Redemption prompts: How far could I or should I go to protect my loved ones and greater community?  The construction of the stories invite writers’ inquiries, easily expanded: When is metaphor truly the best way to express an essential detail or experience?  When will only plain words do?  Metzman makes us privy to what her characters do, but the archetypal questions remain.

Author Fran Metzman is a graduate of the Moore College of Art and the University of Pennsylvania.  She teaches writing at various Philadelphia area colleges and universities and co-authored her first novel, Ugly Cookies, with Joy E. Stocke.  Her blog, “The Age of Reasonable Doubt” can be found at Wild River Review and deals with mature (sometimes immature) dating and relationships, as well as aspects of society that influence all relationships.  The Hungry Heart Stories feature tales of people in crisis yearning for emotional sustenance, where food occasionally intersects the empty spaces in their hearts.

THE HUNGRY HEART STORIES
Wilderness House Press
ISBN 978 0 9827115 5 2

On Amazon

On Barnes & Noble

From Wilderness House Press

You can read more as the blog tour continues:

Wednesday, February 22nd

“Literary Debauchery” by Krista Magrowski

Thursday, February 23rd

“Welcome to Hell” by Glenn Walker

Since I’ve written here, I’ve tried hard to think of myself as a semi-retired musician.  Many months of a seemingly lost ability to tell a story that matters, an economy that ceased to even kinda-sorta support traveling singer-songwriters (at least this one), and a couple gigs in a row too absurd to mention were all contributors to this shift.  I asked myself if I am neither making ends meet nor having fun, why am I doing this?  “Because it’s what I always do,” wasn’t a good enough answer.  So, I set upon the exciting adventure of not doing what I always do.

I’ve discovered that I can’t retire from music.  Sounds show up.  Words show up.  They will become something even when I resist.  I decided I wouldn’t spend an inordinate amount of time pursuing performance and traveling without focused assistance.  It felt good to take off the bookings hat.  I decided I would respond happily to requests while I re-imagine possibilities.  Offers do arise while I work on other things.  The forthcoming chant CD that I’ve been recording at glacial speed has come back into my heart.  I feel the spirit that sings through those mantras and songs again.  It will emerge of its own volition.

Casting off the have-to’s has led to more rediscoveries than new discoveries.  I am dancing again.  Not only at the Sex Dwarf dance party off of South Street, but as much as possible.  The beach last summer. Latin Heat class at the gym.  When I wake up and Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” is a leftover earworm from dreamland.  I used to walk for miles everyday and it made me inherently happy.  I have been taking a lot of that back from the suburban abyss.

I used to write for the absolute love of it.  Age-old wisdom would indicate that making the thing you love your business will alter it, perhaps not for the better.  More wisdom would indicate that if you do what you love for your living, you are truly blessed.  I’d say both are correct.

There will be more music, more concerts, more creative surprises, and new approaches.  There will be art for love and art that matters, at least to me.  I have begun to write through the gunk and the fear to get to the center, the heart of things.  I am reminded of Om Mani Padme Hum – the jewel in the lotus. No matter what whirlwinds I spin around it, there is that.

11/4/11

Eyes strain open above water

Lukewarm, then too warm to escape

Forget entropy-

This is the science

of my regularly scheduled life

the art of evolving

from surface tension

to shore.

The memory of arms flailing

a lesson

to seek the winter sunlight

and keep moving.

I was equally startled that I hadn’t fully understood myself as having biracial identity before that moment.   I had been too busy listening to others’ ideas of me.   Those people in school who told me I was “acting white” or “not black enough” – They were just plain wrong. It was scary to say all that out loud to myself then, and it still is. Regardless, I have to continue to speak up.

This past Sunday I performed at Wilmington Delaware’s first Loving Day Celebration. Loving Day is celebrated on June 12th to commemorate the Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia, which in 1967 finally struck down remaining state laws against interracial marriage. Mildred and Richard Loving were married in 1958 in Washington, D.C., but when they came back to their home in Virginia, were arrested. My parents were married in 1963. Lucky for them, there were no laws against their marriage in New Jersey. Still, I have come to appreciate over the years how difficult it must have been and how much they must have loved each other to go against the grain in that era.

My good friend Jenn Phillips organized the indoor/outdoor Loving Day Celebration of music, food, information, and positive, good times. I had never seen her quite as focused and intense while creating or overseeing anything. Just how much it meant to her was apparent, and I am so pleased that her efforts turned out so wonderfully. Karen Rege and Brandi Chavis performed some well-crafted jazz and R&B standards and originals. I loved hearing Scratchy Catfish’s fun and funny blues tunes (“Rockin’, rollin’, getting’ bizarre/Doin’ the Catfish Stomp!”) I played my set and encouraged audience participation and sing-a-long wherever I could. Jenn asked me to write a song for the occasion, and I came up with a tune called “(Color My Love) Indigo.” This first performance of it went well enough. I was so emotional at the end of the event, that it was hard to leave and hard not to cry. It felt so good to have that deep a sense of acceptance and belonging.

Two or so years ago when I discovered the Mixed Chicks Chat podcast, I felt immediately at home. I got in touch with the co-hosts Fanshen Cox and Heidi Durrow and eventually was a guest on the show. I spoke about overall blended identity encompassing bisexuality, polyamory, and mixed music and spiritual practices as well as issues of race. When they asked their tongue-in-cheek yet serious question “What are you?” I told them: On my mother’s side as far as I know I am African, Haitian, Irish, and Hopi. I was adopted by my maternal grandmother and her second husband – my mom and dad. I felt so blessed to be among fellow “mixed chicks” where a description of nationalities and family circumstance is informational and conversational, never accusatory or confrontational. It truly felt like a homecoming. I am sorry that I missed their Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival in Los Angeles this past weekend, but I am sure that the Wilmington celebration was exactly where I needed to be this time around.

Trying to cope with people’s expectations of me based on assumptions about race has been one of the most painful challenges of my life. I wish I could have dialed down people’s anger and misunderstanding at times, but I would never trade my biracial and multicultural family experience. Among many things, it has helped me know that I may love whomever I love. It has helped me know that yes, a dark-skinned girl can indeed sing rock songs and play a guitar. And if she wants to add Indian chants or electronica or bluegrass or funk to that somewhere down the line, more power to her. That little awakening moment in my old apartment was the beginning of my understanding the importance of being all of oneself, even in the face of culture’s most strident artificial divisions. Every new celebration like Loving Day wears down those walls.

 Writing daily forces me to get through my own crap- the lies it is convenient to tell myself- and I eventually have to get to something real.  This is where I want to live.  It is the middle of the well from which these creative impulses seem to spring.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t welcome a stable ledge on which to rest in this period that feels like a long project in unconditional truth-seeking.  Right now I am tumbling in the midst, and I choose to be ok with tumbling for now, capturing bits of the experience along the way.

 Last week, I really wanted to share the Phoebe Snow interview, so I preempted the NaPoWriMo poems.  Here are the rest of them.  Thanks for reading, for sharing your thoughts, for tumbling through. 

April 21, 2011

The New Trees Take Their Places

Evergreens stand over the yard’s back edge
And there is happy naked dancing for all seasons.
Summer will contend for the witchiest season of them all
With festival love and people who really like drumming.

I wonder what happened to the pissed off trees
And shame-riddled women clutching towels to hide themselves,
persecuted Pagans and the winter that never goes home.
No such luck for the erstwhile King and Queen of Angst.
Some of those folks never lived here, and the rest have flown back
to their lovely realms.

There must be words spoken
like tsunami, earthquake, and revolution.
I wonder what happened to those words.
They must have moved beyond the property line,
but they are remembered daily.

Evergreens stand over the yard’s back edge
Holding gallant space for solid ground,
Keeping watch over quiet growth and loud passion,
And there is happy naked dancing for all seasons.

April 22, 2011

Face the sticker-splattered wall,
part mural part disdain.
I would have endured.
Finding empty letter,
noting missing friendship ring
would have been too hard.
You’ve done me the favor.

April 23, 2011

World Café

The camera
The bit part
One toe in the drink
The harp
The sword
A pen still mightier
The listening corner
The open ears
A reverent envy
The rivalry
The spur
In the side of
New songs
Whatever it takes
To dive in

April 24, 2011

Toes recall wild grass,
Bare skin, sun, and air make love-
Nature’s Easter prayer.

April 25, 2011

A Different Ring

Regarding the ring:
You must wear it well
as you wear shifting speech.
Once your head is turned, flowery protest? Useless.
White gold or semi-precious, I don’t know. I’ve not seen
your finger or your face
in almost long enough.
Who would I be to stand
in the laced path
of the marriage of crisis to victim?
On the New Hope bridge,
you asked for my blessing on a ceremony.
It was another love, declared before meat-eating
Straight-acting, and the face of tradition
Took you on, a code of opposites.
Teacher, point your own way home.
Or not.
Who would I be to stand
in the overgrown path
of separation, mind from knowing?
Bodies- yours and mine
are not to touch again.
I take up scissors to cut the barky vine
can’t help but drop them still
thinking “Have it your way.
See you next life, then.”

I remember, to those who leave
I wave goodbye.
Somewhere in the dredged earth
is the reason to thank you
with a smile.

April 26, 2011

Which pointed buds give way to splayed white flowers,
Which dots will soon be leaves-
On the outside, there are teachings.
Inside, the chair before the desk-
Which wall needs waterproof steel blue paint,
Which bent-page piles most urgent.
Love released, received among proud dandelions,
First order of business.

April 27, 2011

If Found, Do Not Return

Empty shell
almost repaired
left for traveler
willing to give up
dense center
for hollow-handed love
or for king’s horse
in need
of sight gag.

April 28, 2011

Chocolate, Wine, & Porn

First thing I see are bed covers unraveled, like they’ve just enjoyed the ride, then there’s you, crimped brown hair, as avant garde undressed as in leopard print and vintage clogs,
I wonder if you’d let me really see you this way were I not imagining your story and you were not hiding in the arms of academia. I may be deep in the house of mistrust still
at least I imagine you, alone with dark chocolate, red wine, grainy porn, still-no-silicone video, hairy, hot and real. My brain stops here, I want to know what you do by yourself
and what with, times I’ve known you there is love and doors that close
on making love, sudden, no warning, no formula to break barriers.
Still, I believe you, once mistress of three classic pleasures, exciting
and dulling nerve endings, in your endorphin cocktail haze, lover,
may you have remembered me.
I remember your backpack at the bus stop, what your intent eyes knew,
your sleeping beauty on post-collegiate futon, how the three of us, that one time,
barely fit in the shower.
Want to fast-forward this stuck cassette, see what is now, what unstuck passion together might come beyond memory, beyond numbing, beyond the endorphin rush of running.
Pour me a pinot, I’ll bring the raw cacao.

April 29, 2011

Radius

Chant and dance move this night
Circular motion time intended
A love not actionable
Comes back around
A slow burn
Toward flame or fizzle
At any point
There is a straight line
To center

April 30, 2011/May 1, 2011

Garden earth green and floral
or warm city rhythm
If we do not drop our armor
on the eve of Beltane,
we lie by omission.

I plan to wed the summer
hand-held or solitaire,
make love in the field
of clover and thorn

www.robinrenee.com

On November 10, 2005, I had the good fortune to have a phone interview with the wonderful Phoebe Snow. I spoke to her and several other artists for an article that ran as “Even Women Get the Blues” in Elmore Magazine in January 2006. On the sad news of her passing on April 26th, I remembered this transcript, and felt moved to share it. Some of this material first appeared in that original article.

Her words have so much to teach about struggle, perseverance, and diligence in bringing raw talent to fruition. At a few points she spoke about her daughter who was disabled and of caring for her, but felt those comments weren’t for publication. I will honor that. I will say, though, that I am pleased that this came together on Mother’s Day. I believe it is perfect timing.

I am so glad that I had the chance to hear her live performance at Donald Fagen’s New York Rock and Soul Revue at the Beacon Theater in 1992. What a phenomenal voice. Thank you, Phoebe, for the interview and for the inspiration. Blessings on your journey.

♪♪♪

Robin Renée: It’s wonderful to talk to you, first of all. I wanted to get into a little bit of your experience of being involved in blues singing, particularly as a woman. Are there any stories you might have to tell about how being a woman has affected your career? There are probably many.

Phoebe Snow: I don’t even know, you know, if it is connected to blues particularly. Being a woman and being in any kind of professional career is an uphill battle.

RR: Right.

PS: Being a woman and to be employed on any level <laughter> but um, I guess I think –

I did start out and my goal was to be primarily a blues artist, and I was more interested, when I started, in being a guitar player as opposed to being a singer. I didn’t think I had a very good voice, which people are always surprised to hear me say. I was incredibly shy, I was incredibly self-conscious, so I already had that going against me. It was very difficult for me to get up in front of people and sing. So I focused on the guitar a lot.

Now my earliest influences were… I’m trying to think of who it was I heard when I just knew that this was what I wanted to do. People like Bill Broomsey, Memphis Minnie, guitar-oriented blues artists, rural blues artists… Charlie Pickett.

There was a guy in Lower Manhattan around that time who was putting out reissues of old 45 blues records and his name was Nick Pearl. They were all pretty much under his umbrella. He would find these fantastic obscure old blues artists and he would reissue them and try to remaster them in whatever technology existed at that time. I think any blues artist who was around at that time, any kids coming up knew about this guy. I even went and auditioned for him: “I know I’m a contemporary artist and I was in the 70s, but hey! Check out how I can play this!” I would try to impress him with some of my guitar stylings and in return he gave me a lot of great records to listen to. That’s kind of how I started my guitar style.

Also, I was a huge fan and follower and ultimately friend of David Bromberg’s. He was kind of a clearinghouse for great blues stuff. I know that’s not exactly what you asked me, but these are my roots, these are how I made my decision to be… The other thing I was really influenced by, believe it or not, is bluegrass music. I developed a picking style, a very fast picking style. I had a teacher back then, Rick Schoenberg, and he actually made a couple of albums with a guy named Dave Laibman on Verve Records. My family knew the Schoenberg family, so he said, “All right, I’ll give you guitar lessons.” What they were doing at that time when I was trying to study guitar with him was transcribing Scott Joplin piano rag tunes into two-guitar picking style. There exists a master of this somewhere—Rick and Dave doing it, and it’s among some of the most beautiful music ever recorded.

RR: You did say that being a woman in any profession is enough. Do you have any anecdotal stuff about what it was to break through a ceiling?

PS: I think anytime, see… There’s also this typical thing about a woman playing a man’s instrument. And unless she’s dressed like a playboy bunny they have all these perceptions…. Maybe she’s this, maybe she’s that… No… maybe she’s a musician who really wants to do this. The guitar lends a lot of perceptual stuff to this I’m sure. When I heard all these people speculating, “Who is she? Where did she come from?” That was funny stuff. I would like people to think in a very linear way about what I do and just notice the music. In a perfect world, they would, but it’s not a perfect world. My biggest breakthrough would be when people just talk to me about what they’ve heard me do musically and they don’t mention anything else, like “Why are you wearing that?” You know? I actually had another woman say to me years ago, “Girl, we’ve got to do something about your drag.” I’m like, what?? Drag. My clothing. I’m like, why? Leave me alone. If you’re in this for the music, people can really get hung up on the wrong things. So, I really think the greatest triumph for me is that people say “Wow, you’re really a great musician. You’re a great singer.”

RR: So you’re doing some new stuff, I hear. I have Natural Wonder. Is that the most recent?

PS: That would be the most recent one. It was very well under the radar. That’s ok with me. The other thing is I’m really looking forward to performing again. I’d lost my passion for performing for a while, you know. I’ve had a life full of huge challenges at times. Some people know about it, some people don’t. It’s not really important what they were or why I was challenged, I kind of had my musical heart broken because I was trying to juggle so many things that I couldn’t give everything I needed to give to music. When I was vulnerable in that way and I was going through personal challenges, I have to say this, I was somebody who was very easy to manipulate. If someone would yell at me or be dictatorial, like you kind of have to do a certain kind of thing, I would go ok, let’s not get into anything, you just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll just go on autopilot and I’ll do it. I regret that, but I don’t dwell on regretting that. I’m not overwhelmed by whatever my life circumstances are anymore and I think I can really do much better work, at this stage of my life. I didn’t really know where I was gonna be. Were you at The Bitter End the other night?

RR: No, unfortunately I didn’t make it.

PS: We are planning other venues. Once they know that I’m out there and wanna work… so that’s what we’re working on right now – polishing up the live performances and I’m concentrating on a lot on original material. I’ve been validated as a songwriter— that’s another triumph! Gotta mention that in the triumph column! I never knew if my songwriting was viable or not. Now people are saying, “Yeah!  You write hooks!”

RR: Just out of pure selfishness… What do you think a songwriter trying to break out today should know?

PS: I had the benefit of advice by iconic songwriters…. Take everything with a grain of salt. Take what you need and leave the rest. Mostly follow your own muse. If something feels like it’s exciting and you want to write it, listen to your muse. That belongs to you. Don’t let people push you around. Especially songwriting, because that’s coming out of your heart.

I have been noticing simple themes that help lead me. The spiritual power that dancing holds (Sex Dwarf New Wave Dance Party!) and the organic emotions that electronic music stirs up have come to the surface. I am anxious to start a new branch of my musical journey writing with samples and sound libraries more a part of the initial process.

It was strange to discover myself being not quite honest in poetry. Longing to connect with one particular individual, I wrote about longing for many. What I wrote was not untrue – I do want to travel to all those places and see those folks – but in the moment, there really was a certain place I wanted to be most of all. What a cop out! Maybe one day I’ll profess my silly crush.  Leave it to the making of art to point directly to these fears. 

My favorite poem of the week is First Child/Old Soul, written for the daughter of a friend of mine, who I hope will be a friend in her own right. She recently showed up in my world as a college student (!) wanting to interview me about my work for one of her classes. I’ve been enjoying her poems at Sonnetess in Progress.

April 13, 2011

New wave pied pipers
pulled me back across the bridge
DJ-healers Marilyn and Robert
pushed reset and I remembered
When I slowed down dancing
I saw geese and green return
and got over the Anywhere-But-Here

Still there is the genuine longing
for unkempt love and ballsy new creation
Kansas City, Stockholm, Delray Beach and Seoul,
Dublin, Mt. Tremper, Port Angeles,
New Brunswick, New Jersey to New Brunswick, Canada
Chuck Berry’s Promised Land for all and for now.
I will dial home, touch down in Philadelphia
and I’ll dance worldwide

April 14, 2011

Phone-shaped cages and
the minds of weird geniuses:
home to angry birds.

April 15, 2011

Tangerine juice and the light on mysteriously downstairs.
No good explanations but variety and ghosts.
I try to recall what I’ve learned today
but life and lessons aren’t handed out in gold bars.
I wonder if fun for me is possible in the future
where there are old CD cases and bodypaint, taxes, sudoku and gardens.
I hear your voice still there, and your touch,
So I’ll guess ‘Yes.’
I hope there will be tangerine.

April 16, 2011

First Child/Old Soul

She emerged whole cloth
Anime & zombie cloaked
Wise in a field of sleep,
waiting for ripe fruit.
She knows the young love poems
& the secrets to rise from the see-no-evil dead.
Listen: her new voice is a healer’s rain.

April 17, 2011

This sleepwriting
yields a dull spark
where life is measured in TV news
and sitcom currency.

April 18, 2011

The Hair is a Big Shape

That my hair is a big shape,
I learned today,
and that my ribcage casts a shadow.
“The” hair “and “the” ribcage, I should say –
With art modeling, there’s nothing personal.

Stood 6 hours
an all-day mannequin to assist
the slow birth of illustrators.
Some days the dreams come,
the novella, the poems,
so vivid I am sure
all props hold still vibrancy
and the “girls” in Gary Wilson’s closet
live large in cramped quarters.

Today,
mind zeroed out
to big nothing
not like enlightenment,
but detention.

In boredom, I exposed my imperfections
and the ones with the pencils
rendered theirs.

April 19, 2011

On Pesach

A sweet taste of memory
A walk in bitter shoes
Each inner freedom grows
To strengthen a table of friends.

April 20, 2011

A Sampled Prayer

Electric and nervous
Button-pushing snippets
Captured in bits
Used to be called cop-out
Now brilliance,
Now holy testimony.
Vision of sound waves
Across the path of downtown
Dance floor
Invisible kiss of motion
And all is forgiven.




www.robinrenee.com

Often while working on the daily pieces for NaPoWriMo, I am reminded of my experience of writing poetry in the Stone Age before the internet explosion. I would write a piece and many times it would feel like the page would burn my hands if I didn’t do something with it. Off to Kinko’s I’d go so I could make copies for poet friends or to send it off to the most suitable Call for Submissions. I would feel a kind of relief then, as if this urgent burst of energy now had some focus or reason to be.

The immediacy of my daily posts on the Facebook Fan Page and 365/365  more than fulfills that old urge, and is fairly confronting. I am taken aback at just how truly immediately other eyes are on these words. The commitment to write daily leaves no real time for revision, rethinking, retraction. I get to see my jagged edges, neuroses, loves, and incomplete thoughts. And so does everyone else. Really quickly. The swiftness of sharing this ongoing series of poems and the comments and conversations that come up around them is as soul-shaping as the writing.

I do feel shaped by what I write, as the inner and outer experiences shape me and prompt me to write. I have felt shaped quite literally lately, posing for a clay sculpture class. It is odd to feel sometimes like there are 10 voodoo dolls of me being molded before my eyes. I sometimes imagine that I’ll leave class subtly or profoundly different from the way I came in, and wonder about this as a metaphor for every interaction.

Here are the most recent poems:

April 6, 2011

Names

I think I’ve found the perfect candidate
for The Fool
in my personal deck of Tarot.
The role of The Devil has been taken.
I wonder what The Goddess calls me
when I can’t hear Her over the music.

April 7, 2011

Where no orgasm is unmemorable
Where the walls embrace wide auras
Where books and beings point out the Heart of Hearts
Where God sings the wailing blues
Where there are clean dishes and enough blankets
Where there are spent toys of pleasure
Where I sleep late
I begin to notice things
Where the forest holds love without need.

April 8, 2011

Uninvited

He left her a message today
Said he wanted to make amends
A sound beating never forgotten
gets icy silence in any decade
I remember being made to hear
the uninvited
My face in a journal thinking
I’ll just write
No, I’ll just sleep
How do I get out Try to
sleep
Her story my story
Any woman’s story told
is a cutting of the cord
Bloodletting
Our Burning Times
to purify
if there must be fire.

April 9, 2011

On the Lindenwold Train

On the Lindenwold train to Philly
you keep approaching to interrupt
an otherwise perfect spring fever.
Warm enough tonight
to feel cute on South St.
in jeans and short black jacket,
and at ease back home
where forsythia announce
the inevitable end to cold.
On my way to meet the poly people
same place we met once
at the inevitable start.

This train best get going.
Take me to my punk rock roots
and motley crew of a mockup family
so I forget how once last fall
I would have liked to catch you sleepy,
mojito in hand,
and me with knives in mine.
Luck held out for both of us.

Trees still bare.
I long to lie naked in the neighborhood
under natural cover,
but I will not rush this season.
It pushes me slowly along from last September,
when I lay trapped in a learning curve
of drinking and dreaming
your house demolition.

Woodcrest Station.
A musty man stinking
of B.O. and basement
chatters questions.
I am annoyed by my impulse to answer,
glad to break the tumbling thoughts
of broken intentions,
secret darknesses
that I find have left
strange nutrients.
I lap up new knowledge,
drops of blood to a ravenous bat.
I turn my head to breathe.

The box is open now.
There will be more weapons
forged with sparks of light.
I rest relieved
it is someplace else
your poisonous script will run.
My feet hit 8th & Market,
smooth in the rhythm of my streets.

April 10, 2011

Spokeswoman

Whatever ruptured yesterday
heals today
I remember or decide
there is no healing
without the wound
The wig display head
At the foot of my bed
May tell the stories better than I.
I may let her.

April 11, 2011

My bath, her shower.
Dreaming a bathroom conflict,
I caved. She’s first again.

April 12, 2011

ROYGBIV

and so I looked relieved at the black and white 32 oz. shampoo bottles lined up
perfectly on the ledge by the tub facing one direction with no more price labels
bathroom is not bad today save for some sweeping that gets left for Saturdays
Order is like meditation, keep coming back to same things same places, a mantra of stuff
at least that’s what I tell myself sometimes and I mostly really mean it
Then I wonder if it is the loving order or the allowing disarray that is the real problem if there is one, but I do know
that the closet goes by item type and order of color the way nature paints rainbows and sometimes bills get so-called filed, forgotten in front of what used to be the Zen space with the new guitar strings candles and exercise bra
It is lonely when brain is frayed, never any-questions-fried but as if a little mouse were working away nest-building
from the outside in
Putting it back together I look for the real Zen space, the one that is always there in my head find it for real without pretense no pretending something about putting in order is holy aligning with the knowing of mystics flawless grace notes and good sex. I remember overhearing Rose and Lissa laugh about my alphabetical albums, I look
for something to wear and am pleased by the disproportionate sight of purple


www.robinrenee.com